papernoise blackbook

My cover and artwork for the music EP It’s the End was just published on the illustration portal IllustrationServed, you can check it out here: www.illustrationserved.com/gallery/Its-the-End-EP-Artwork

Détective Noir by Ryan Licata

From his ninth storey window the city lights, on and off, created a mosaic against the night. He swigged neat whiskey from a tumbler, staring in at all those well-lit apartments. In rooms and kitchens, against curtains drawn, he could see the cut-out silhouettes of people having their parties. Women, their necks thrown back, mouths agape, laughing their heads off; and men, hanging up their dinner jackets, loosening their neckties, smoking short-cropped cigars. He smoked one himself, raised his drink. Let them have their fun with the lights on, for later, in the dark, he knew it would be murder.

Notes

This is the first Detective Noir story by Ryan Licata, the first one he wrote, (I had published the second one, Detective Noir et la Chatte, already some time ago here). It was his idea that the detective should looks somehow like me. I will do the whole bunch in the next weeks, they make up a nice little series inside his hundred word stories.

Io ho ucciso Pier Paolo Pasolini di Scoiattolazzo

Non che ne vada fiero, ma qualcuno doveva pur farlo.
Il suo intellettualismo ostentato, la sua lotta di classe, la mente usata come arma, sono cose che tuttora mi restano insopportabili.
In fondo non era che un emarginato, un estremista, meritevole solo di essere tra i primi.
E cosa può restare di un borghese che rifugge la borghesia?
Parole su parole:
“Tutto e’ amorfo..senza vento…quante cose ricordiamo in vita? La morte non e’ che un grande montaggio cinematografico dove restano solo le cose importanti, i momenti che tutti hanno bisogno di ricordare…”

Pier Paolo Pasolini doveva morire…
ed io l’ho ucciso…

Notes

Who killed Pier Paolo Pasolini? They say that it was Pino Pelosi, but the story isn’t really working. There’s still a lot of discussion going on about the possible scenario and the real killer still remains a vague shadow…

The jury, foto by Armin Barducci

Saturday the Grand Jury for the NoWords Comics contest had its final meeting. The Members of the Jury were 4 (as shown in the photo above, from left to right): Luigi Fassi curator of the Museum Gallery, Giancarlo Alessandrini the visual creator of Martin Mystere and comic artist for Bonelli, Thomas Ott our special guest from Switzerland and master of the scratch-board, and finally me.

We had a really hard time judging the entries, as there were a lot of really great works among them. In the end, after endless discussions, we managed to come to a final verdict… and I must say I am really pleased with it. Of course now it’s still a bit early to reveal the names of the winners to the public, but keep an eye on the bolzanocomics.it website and you’ll know soon enough.

Me and Elisabeth spent the following day with Thomas Ott and his wife Anet, showing them the wonders of Bolzano… like the mummy exhibition at the Archaeology Museum (the museum where Oetzi lies… how fitting!). Thomas of course really liked the exhibition… as I did as well. It’s amazing and really well done, with mummies from all over the world (from Egypt, Peru, China, Italy, northern Europe just to name a few) and a lot of background information.

The day ended with Thomas Ott sitting on our drawing table signing the books by him he found in my bookshelf. And he also gave me a copy of his latest publication called Unplugged (Edition Stephan Witschi, Zürich, CH), a great collection of sketches and doodles.

I’ve been a huge fan of Thomas Ott for a long time, ever since I saw one of his stories on Strapazin, more than 10 years ago. I think he’s one of the most interesting artists around, a real master of the scratch-board technique and he’s got this ability to create dense and capturing atmospheres, something I really would like to be able to do… so it was really exiting to meet him and go around and just talk about comics and movies and making art…

A portrait of me by Thomas Ott

Some links:

Thomas Ott (t.0.t.t.) homepage
Martin Mystere
Museum Gallery AR-GE Kunst
South Tyrol Museum of Archeology
Bolzano Comics 2009

I tried several times to portrait my brother Andreas. Unfortunately I never really succeeded. What is it that makes people we know really well so hard to portrait?

Notes:

Two sketches made in winter. Two completely different subjects. The first is titled Mr.Zombie explains inking, the second is a portrait of Sbrizz. One could say that it is a bit like beauty and the beast…

A portrait I made for Sbrizz. Could as well do more of these…

A self portrait I made for my profile on deviantart. The being on my back is called Octoskull and it’s my new pet.